The Effect of Qur’anic Context on the Selection of Lexical Items Denoting Action and the Elucidation of Their Meanings

Abstract

This study examines Qur’anic context and its effect on the selection of lexical items associated with the concept of action, with particular attention to the role of context in guiding their meanings and determining their intended purposes. It does so through a linguistic analysis of these lexical items and an examination of their semantic significance within the textual contexts in which they occur. In this respect, “we are confronted with two fundamental components of the text: the lexicon and the context, which operate in conjunction to reveal the essence of the lexical item and its import through textual relations generated by linguistic correspondences.” The analysis demonstrates that context contributes to the selection of lexical items in ways that accord with the meaning and purposes of the text and plays a significant role in determining their context-specific meanings. When a lexical item is examined across the different passages in which it occurs, its meaning can be seen to vary according to context while still preserving its semantic core and fundamental signification. The study further shows that context takes account of the semantic specificity of each occurrence, selecting one lexical item rather than another in a manner consistent with the communicative situation and the rhetorical purpose of the Qur’anic text.

The study is organized into four principal sections. The first addresses lexical items denoting righteous worldly action, focusing on the terms al-kasb (acquisition/earning) and al-saʿy (striving). It traces their occurrences and examines how their meanings vary according to context. The second and third sections investigate lexical items associated with actions related to reward and punishment, namely salafa, zakkā, and nakkala. The fourth section examines lexical items denoting wrongful action, namely iqtarafa and ijtaraḥa, tracing their occurrences in the Qur’an and elucidating their meanings in each context.

Qur’anic context possesses a distinctive capacity to generate semantic multiplicity within a text or lexical item, in accordance with the nature of the Qur’anic text itself, which accommodates multiple semantic possibilities in interpretation. This constitutes one of its important features and contributes to the enduring semantic and epistemic richness of the Qur’an. Such richness emerges through a distinctive system in which lexical items and their meanings interact within a coherent semantic structure that manifests the inimitability and grandeur of the Qur’anic text.